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Rewind Review: Defense Grid The Awakening

Way back in 2008 Hidden Path Entertainment announced it was making a tower defense game called Defense Grid: The Awakening. I’m not sure if they expected it to have the success it has, but I am sure the had hopes that it would. It has become one of the best selling XBLA games and is now an award winning title. With many different DLC packs and updates to the game, they have shown the fans they want to keep supporting the game and the fans that have given them their success.

Pros:

Humor: The computer that you awaken talks to you throughout the game and he has some interesting humor and while it may fall flat on some people I found it funny in a corny kind of way. I like games that have someone or something talking to you while you play that keeps you immersed in the world.

Graphics: The graphics of the game are quite nice and you are given three different camera angles to experience said visuals. You have a zoomed out view that lets you see the entire map at once for planning out what you’re going to be doing, the half way zoomed in view which I liked the most gives you a closer view when looking a specific section of the map, and last you have a fully zoomed in view where you can watch the towers blast the alien scum into smithereens. The detail in the close up mode is actually done really well and I enjoyed checking out the different species of alien. It all runs smoothly and is easy on the eyes.

Gameplay: Like most tower defense games the main objective is to build towers and defend a specific item or place. In Defense Grid the path the aliens will be coming from is easily visible and you just place your towers strategically to be victorious. There are challenges that change the gameplay and make it much more difficult but having something that is difficult to complete was a fun experience. You really will have to pay attention to the aliens’ weaknesses and prepare your towers accordingly.

Length: While the length of the campaign levels is only 20 missions it will take you a good amount of time to complete them. There only being 20 levels may turn some people off but with all the challenges that are available for each level you will keep going back for more and spend more time than you realized playing through them. There are also three DLC packs with new campaign levels and challenges to increase the replayability. There has even been a title update to add new game modes and challenge missions for free so I feel that for the price Defense Grid is a steal.

Cons:

No rotatable Camera: While the three different camera views are great and give you great views of the battlefield, I couldn’t help but wish I could rotate the camera. There were just times that I felt I would have a more strategic view if I could spin around and look at the map from the other side.

No Multiplayer: It may just be that I have played a couple tower defense games now that had multiplayer that left me wishing that Defense Grid had it. I imagine at the time and the way the game is made that it would have been more difficult to do, I just thought it could have been cool to have a bigger map with both players setting towers and sending their own aliens out to try and steal the other player’s cores.

No Level Creator: I could see this happening in the Steam version of the game long before the XBLA one but a level creator would have been a great addition. Taking time to build our own levels and sending them to friends to have them try and beat them would have been like setting up custom challenges.

In Conclusion:

Defense Grid is an addictive game that you will sink plenty of time into if you enjoys the tower defense genre. It can pose more of a challenge than some of the tower defense games that I have played before but I welcomed that with open arms, because it made me want to beat the levels even more. It is forgiving that if you did make that big mistake you can rewind to the last checkpoint which I used more than a few times. I would highly recommend it to any fan of tower defense games and encourage those that aren’t to at least give it a try. The game is discounted pretty often in XBLA sales and I would scoop it up and join in on the fun if I were you.